Curtains for union coercion (Employee Rights Act)

An Illinois woman recounted the three-year ordeal she faced to have her workplace's union decertified in testimony Wednesday before the House Education and the Workforce Committee. She ultimately got a decertification vote, but the National Labor Relations Board, the main labor law enforcement agency, prohibited the votes from being counted.

"They concluded that we did not deserve the decertification election because, although the union had a year to bargain and had even scheduled a contract ratification before I filed the petition that got us the election, they still had not had enough time to bargain. The ballots were destroyed, and we will never know the results," Karen Cox told the committee.

If you are a worker trying to sever your relationship with a union, you have to make extra certain you didn't make even the tiniest error when you do it. That's what the National Labor Relations Board said Tuesday when it ruled that nine workers who decertified their union in 2012 still had to pay it another year's worth of membership dues because they sent in some of the paperwork too early.

So, if you are a worker who is trying to exit your union, you have been warned by the federal government: dot every "i," cross every "t" and double- and triple-check everything you do. It may cost you a lot if you don't.

In 1947 organized labor spent todayís equivalent of $11 million opposing the Slave Labor Act. The act is better known today as Taft-Hartley. Despite the unionís rant, it was designed to provide protection against abusive and often violent labor unions. Now on the 70th anniversary of that law, Congress is again poised to realign employment relationships free from coercive union pressures.

Last week, the House of Representatives held their first public hearing on the Employee Rights Act (ERA). Contrary to the union imagery of slavery, today we have polling. And the ORC polls over the last three years consistently show that employees are rejecting union intimidation. The ERA has multiple provisions which independently pivot around 80 percent approval with Democrats and union households.

Under current law it is not a majority of those affected who will determine if a union is established but a simple majority of those voting. The ERA returns the voting standard to an earlier labor law that required true majorities.

The unions admonish that if it took an absolute majority for a member of Congress to be elected, then no one would gain office. But that is why the Constitution requires only a simple majority. We have to fill those seats for government to work. In a reading of the Constitution, though, there is no mention of the AFL-CIO. With only 7 percent of the nongovernment workforce in a union, itís apparent these groups are not required for our country to function.

I bet you would have loved working in the sweatshops. The ones with the locked exits and only one BR break allowed.

Or the local dynamite factory that blew so many times that they would only hire blacks and Chinese because whites were too precious to be blown up since they had families and were pillars of the community etc etc.. Still didn't stop one of my great uncles from dying on the job.

I bet you would have loved working in the sweatshops. The ones with the locked exits and only one BR break allowed.

Or the local dynamite factory that blew so many times that they would only hire blacks and Chinese because whites were too precious to be blown up since they had families and were pillars of the community etc etc.. Still didn't stop one of my great uncles from dying on the job.

The desperate extremes to which union apologists resort... equal parts amusing and disturbing.